How to Convince Your Boss to Buy You a Stand Up Desk

Posted by Angela Villani on February 22, 2016

OR Why You Shouldn’t Pay for a Stand Up Desk Yourself!

Many people today are looking at standing while they are working in their day jobs as study after study shows the dangers of sitting all day. Now when you go out and begin to look for a desk that allows you to sit and stand during the day, because you have read that standing all day is not good either, then you start to realize that they are incredibly expensive. BUT luckily our Miracle Desk is not only the most affordable sit stand desk on the market it is also on this very site! So that eliminates the issue for affordability but let’s say that you still don’t want to shell out the cash for a desk that will be used at work, for work and to profit the company eventually. Well then listen closely because if there is one thing I know it is that bosses love to save money and make more of it. So I am going to give you all the facts you need to craft the perfect proposal to get your company to buy you a nice fancy Miracle Desk right here. I am writing this article because of this great inforgraphic from juststand.org that says most people want the option to sit or stand while working.

The Outline to The Persuasion

So just like with any other purchase for the office the company, no matter how big or small, will want to know why you should get this item and more importantly how will it help the company. The beauty of stand up desks is that all of the research points to the fact that not only would sit stand workstations help increase energy, improve morale, increase communication, boost performance and help employees focus more but it would lower the cost of insurance as it decreases the likelihood of diabetes, heart disease and a host of other illnesses. So converting to a sit stand desk would not only save the company money in the long run as the cost of insurance decreased with a healthier workforce but that workforce would be more focused, energized, happy, less likely to be depressed and therefore more productive overall which would increase the bottom line. So let's break down each of these points and give you some raw data to use also because you can’t just go in armed with our blog saying so!

Save The Company Money

A huge expense for companies these days is the cost of healthcare and it is only rising as we become a more sedentary society we become more obese, have more heart problems, diabetes is more than an epidemic and depression keeps people from work too. Don’t take my word for it though just read on. “Annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage reached $17,545 this year, up 4 percent from last year, with workers on average paying $4,955 towards the cost of their coverage -- according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Education Trust. -Sep 22, 2015.”[1] That study is quoted in a much longer paper on the NCSL.org site looking at rising health care costs as the Affordable Health Care Act brought on more sick people and the insurance companies are looking to raise premiums. Companies are using all types of programs to get their employees healthier so that they can reduce their premiums over time. This can come in the form of offering gym memberships to having company wide health initiatives with rewards and bonuses for participating and completing certain actions. There is a rise in Corporate Wellness programs and I firmly believe that as a part of any corporate wellness program stand up desks should be included. I will explain why I believe that based on all the evidence that shows how much more healthy a person can be who uses a stand up desk instead of sitting for 8+ hours a day at work.

Standing while working even for only 20 minutes an hour can have a dramatic effect on a person's health, in a positive way, while sitting all day is now being called “the new smoking.” [2] Sitting is causing all sorts of health problems and this is costing companies money and they don’t even know it. You must be the one to help them learn so that they can not only save money by investing a little today but save lives. According to CNN.com “Last year we learned from a scientific review of 47 studies that this sedentary behavior increases your chances of getting a disease or condition that will kill you even if you exercise. Now a new study from the Netherlands running in the journal Diabetologia suggests that even an extra 40 minutes of couch potato behavior will dramatically increase your risk of getting type 2 diabetes.”[3] If just an extra 40 minutes on the couch can increase your chance of type 2 diabetes then imagine what 8+ hours a day in front of a computer is doing to us all!

It’s not just the cost of healthcare that is costing employers money either. It’s the fact that sitting is making us sick and people don’t just miss work which makes for less money being made but when they are at work they are taking more breaks or are having to stop work to ease their back pain or to take medicine. The hours of lost productivity are insane. So if you couple the lowering of the cost of health care due to a healthier workforce with a decrease in time missed or time distracted from work you save money and make more. In this study done by juststand.org they found that 85% of people surveyed responded that they take some sort of break due to an illness that is associated with sitting.[4] That is a lot of people missing a lot of work just because they sit. When you consider that our Miracle Desk (Found HERE) is under $80 and you consider the cost of missed work then just having them at the desk for less than 6 months it would pay for itself.

Ok so we have thoroughly covered the fact that employers can save money by lowering the cost of healthcare by using sit stand desk workstations to have a healthier workforce and employees will miss less work and take less breaks so therefore earn more for the company. Let’s move on then to how the company will make more because that now healthy workforce is going to be energetic, laser focused, happy and more productive. This is all backed up by research and you will have all the links to follow or do your own and you will find out all this is fact.

Let’s Make the Company More Money!

I know. I know. You don’t get all jazzed about making someone else more money but guess what when you are the person who introduces this to the company as not only a cost saving initiative but a profit increasing one also guess who is going to get a raise and probably that big promotion. Well obviously I hope you and not that jerk who got it last year even though he totally didn’t deserve it. But in all seriousness what you just read is about your life and your health. Not just for the company but for your sake get a standing desk to work at because sitting is literally killing us all. So I said I would help you not have to pay for it and I think that my extensive linking and footnoting should help you but I know business’s and they want an ROI so let’s show them how to turn a $79 desk into $1,000’s of profit.

A problem we discussed above is that employees are leaving their desks and are taking unnecessary breaks or stretching even just because sitting is so awful. This is lost revenue for the company because anytime someone is not doing their job then the company is paying them and they are not producing the way they should. Couple this with the fact that we know people who work in front of computers get distracted all the time by social media, email, chats and youtube videos of cat’s playing the piano (they are funny videos though so you can’t blame them). Business Insider says that distractions in the work place cost employers roughly $650 billion a year. To quote them “General distraction in the office — anything from your handheld to the water cooler — helps drive down productivity for American business everywhere. In fact, 53 percent of workers agree that these distractions affect their productivity, despite an even larger number claiming having a smartphone makes them a better worker.” [5] That is a ton of money because people aren’t focused. What if we stopped and thought about the lack of energy the employees have and how much more productive they would be if they were happy, focused and energetic. Ok so we know that not being focused is a problem and leads to a lack of productivity and therefore a drop in profits but what if I said that sitting is what makes them less focused and that people who use a standing or sit stand desk feel more focused and energetic and have been shown to be more productive. Would you believe me? You don’t have to. I will share with you all the data on how study after study have shown people to be more focused and productive when using a stand up desk. Oh but wait before that let me just list off a few of the major companies using stand up desks right now: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, FF Venture Capital and any other self respecting start up at this point!

“The grand conclusion: Compared to a period of time when a person was not using the standing desk, we found that standing led to up to 10% more productivity.”[6]This is a quote from a Business Insider article on stand up desks and increased productivity. So imagine a whole team of people who are now not wasting money and time but are actually 10% more productive than when they were sitting. This team would excel at all things it was given and if compared to the rest of the company they would outshine them on all data points. I am starting from the end though here because I just basically spoiled the whole thing. See I should have led with stats on increased energy and focus and then built up to how you get the 10% increase in productivity but I don’t work that way. See I told you I was going to deliver and I wanted you to see right away before you had to wade through loads of articles on energy and happiness and focus. So now that we have that out of the way let’s talk about how you become so much more productive.

Studies show that people who use a sit stand desk are more focused and on top of that there are tons of self reported cases of people saying they feel more focused after switching to a sit stand desk. Now there are some defectors but many of them attempted to go from sitting all day to standing all day with no transition period and without the right accessories and tools. I don’t believe that to be a fair assessment of the true sit stand workstation. “Texas A&M just proved it’s true. Their study found that students using standing desks showed an increase in brain activity in the pre-frontal cortex. That means that both their problem solving skills and working memory improved. It’s pretty amazing!” That quote is from the site officing today but is quoting the study done by The International Journal of Environmental and Public Health which recently published the results of Texas A&M’s School of Public Health study“Standing Up for Learning: A Pilot Investigation on the Neurocognitive Benefits of Stand-Biased School Desks”[7] The article goes on to explain what this all means. They say that “This means better problem solving abilities, better attention and focus, improved time management, improved memorization, better ability at prioritizing tasks, and better organization. In turn, this leads to the possibility of workers being more efficient and productive during work hours.” So not just improved focus. I guess I under shot a little. Imagine a full office of people actually working at their maximum capacity and using their brains to solve problems instead of solve sudoku on their iPhone. If HR or the person who makes the buying decisions can’t see based on just this alone that not only should they buy you a Miracle Desk but that they should outfit the entire office with them then I don’t know what else to tell you.

Conclusion

We covered a lot of ground here but I think it was good. I am glad you are going to get that desk you deserve and after next quarter's numbers come in my guess is that raise and promotion. I am not kidding it is a revolution out there. The only problem is that it is nothing new. As a matter of fact Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson, and Ernest Hemingway all stood up when they worked. See so brilliant people for a long time have been standing and working. It is only recently that the chair and office and desk job have been invented and we are seeing the devastation it is wreaking on us both physically and mentally. Take the articles from the links or footnotes and maybe add a pie chart or a spreadsheet or do a powerpoint and make your point so that your employer gets off their butts (see that’s a standing desk joke) and makes the right decision to have a happy and healthy company.